After we re-elect GWB, I hope he will get a better handle on government spending, strive to abolish several departments (starting with education and energy), and turn more responsibilities over to the states. Eventually I'd like to see federal taxes be minimal, realizing that state taxes will have to go up to compensate for their increased responsibilities.

"I believe the States can best govern our home concerns, and the General Government our foreign ones." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.

First choice: Edwards
Second choice: Kerry.

For me, a vote for Edwards would have been a vote FOR Edwards. A vote for Kerry is a vote AGAINST Bush.

I swore I wouldn't get involved in any more political threads, and I've already done two tonight.

Avoiding the question, but I just voted.

Only two contested races on my ballet - and a home rule question. I had fun filling in the ovals with the marker though.

"The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air out of the tires." Dorothy Parker

Can I move to Canada?

OK, the fact that I'm going to vote for Bush doesn't come as a surprise. It probably also doesn't come as a surprise that I would have supported Lieberman if he had ever become a serious candidate, or that I voted for McCain over Bush in the 2000 primaries. So ... two things (one more than you asked for, Esbee!):

1) Why Bush over Kerry? Because I can't stand Kerry.

Back in the days of VVAW, I was a big Kerry supporter. I liked Kerry's idea: have the veterans tell about how awful the war was. I still think it was key in mobilizing the widespread war opposition (and, if you want more testimony about what a FUBAR Vietnam was, read Michael Herr's Dispatches). Yet Kerry himself was a colossal poseur.

I know this comes as old news to many of you, but the issue that forever defined Kerry's lack of character goes back to the VVAW. In April 1971, Kerry led a march of veterans to throw their medals onto the steps of the Capitol, symbolically rejecting the honor that they had earned in a war that they didn't believe in. He even spoke about how 'this administration forced us to return our medals.... These leaders denied us the integrity those symbols supposedly gave our lives.' (emphasis added) Kerry received a lot of press for throwing his medals back, too:

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/kerry_faq.html (see the third panel)

Except ... he didn't throw his medals. He threw medals that a vet who couldn't make the trip had given him to throw as part of the protest. Meantime, he quietly kept his own medals, and when he became a U.S. senator, he put a display of the medals in his office.

To me, this shows that Kerry doesn't actually have any convictions. If he believed in the idea of giving your medals back to the government strongly enough to lead a march advocating it, then Kerry should have thrown his own medals. He didn't. Instead, he wanted to straddle the issue. He wanted the fame and attention of leading the march, but he was cynical enough to hedge his bets, just in case he might want to show off those medals in the future ... as, indeed, he now does at every chance.

I found this comment, from a Vietnam vet, expressed my own feelings about Kerry's actions:

The first hint of a bit of disconnect in your style was when during your first Senate campaign you denied returning your war medals, with a thousand other veterans, in protest of the war during Dewey Canyon III. That was a bit of a shock, since for most veterans who returned their medals in that emotional ceremony on Friday, April 23, 1971, it was a very proud and healing moment. Your 1984 campaign response: You had returned the medals of a WWII acquaintance at his direction. All those 13 years everyone thought you had had the courage and leadership to return medals that to veterans who returned them represented medals of dishonor drenched in the blood of innocent Vietnamese who did not deserve to die for a lie, any more than our fellow US Americans. I guess you knew then that you were to be running for office.

We see the same pattern of trying to have it both ways in all of Kerry's actions. Voting against Gulf War I, then voting for Gulf War II, then voting against funding the troops. Claiming to have voted for the Cuba sanctions before a Latino audience, when he actually voted against them. Constant flip-flops. In all, John Kerry believes in nothing except that John Kerry should be president. In that regard, he is more like George H.W. Bush than George W. Bush is!

2) What would I like to see Bush do in a second term?

Well, although I really dislike Kerry and wouldn't vote for him as dog catcher, I don't think Bush has had a great first term. He has done some good things: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the tax rate cuts; the prosecutions of the corporate crooks (note, BTW, that most of the theft began during Clinton II, but that doesn't let Bush off the hook for appointing Harvey Pitt as the first director of the SEC); and Karl Rove has generally pushed a pragmatic blend of Republicanism (even though many Democrats view him as the devil incarnate). Deficits are not a problem as long as investments in the U.S. remain attractive, BTW; bad economic times ALWAYS produce deficits, since many people suffer huge losses of income. As far as U.S. investments, I spend much of my day working with foreigners who want to invest their money in the U.S.

But Bush has also pandered to the right on several issues, ranging from the appointment of Ashcroft as AG to his loopy proposed constitutional amendment against permitting any state to legalize gay marriage within its own borders. He's also pandered to others on individual issues (such as the steel tariffs, a pander to Pennsylvania and Ohio union workers). I personally am revolted by the idea of "homeland security," even though I fully comprehend the threat of al-Qaeda. And the intellectual lockstep imposed by the administration has led lower-level bureaucrats to suppress information that might be inconvenient to the stated policy, whether that information is a dissenting estimate of the cost of the proposed (since adopted) Medicare prescription drug benefit or the level of mercury emissions from California plants (and yeah, true information about WMDs probably fell victim to this as well, but at a level lower than Bush-Cheney-Rice). Make no mistakes, once Bush makes a policy decision, everyone else on his team makes sure that it's Administration policy.

Yes, I know he's managed to keep the far right from running its own fringe candidate to split the 2004 vote (many Democrats have been actively encouraging a fringe right candidate, such as former Alabama Chief Justice Roy "10 Commandments" Moore). And yes, I know that Bush is never going to be the type of inspiring leader who can motivate with his words alone. Instead, he's more the CEO type -- in particular, the CEO who gets too close to his board of directors, kinda like Michael Eisner ... or the CEO who keeps his own people from possibly overshadowing him or sending a mixed message, kinda like Bill Belichick.

Frankly, I'd REALLY like to see Bush break with the pattern in his second term. Bush has taken the lead on some items opposed by the right wing, such as immigration (BTW, have you noticed that a lot of the anti-immigration zealots have now moved to the LEFT wing? -- see the current battle in the Sierra Club for an example). Now we need to see more of that, and less of the zealots on the right.

Oh, and I think Bush needs to work to implement a way of doing business, not just a series of expedient short-term actions. I personally think that the second term should be used to push more of a libertarian agenda in social areas (leaving out the loony anti-IRS thrust of the Libertarian Party), while retaining the economic policies advocated by Greg Mankiw, whom I think has done a GREAT job in trying conditions (9/11, the end of the Internet bubble, the massive corporate frauds, oil price shocks) to keep things from getting worse (the last such bubble bust lingered for around a decade, from 1971 to 1982).

Yeah, I realize that this is a tepid endorsement of Bush. But that fits my feelings. Really, I'm voting more against Kerry than I am in favor of Bush. John Kerry ... to know him is to hate him.

Soylent Green: recycling America, one person at a time.

John Kerry ... to know him is to hate him.

AyaK, just curious as to why you are always so dismissive of those of us who hate Bush, when you seem to come to the conclusion regarding John Kerry. How is it that we are always labeled as irrational (that's what's implicit when you use the term "angry left"), and yet you are not?

And yes, I am not ignoring the fact that you just articulated perfectly rational reasons why. Just because we might not have done the same thing doesn't mean we don't have just as long a list of such reasons, and yet it always seems you assume we don't. Seems a little unfair, is all I'm saying.